Malaysian MH17: Ukrainian&Western Propaganda against Russian Propaganda. Who is Best?

Ukrainian air control may have deliberately facilitated and enabled the shot-down. Combining Western and Ukrainian propaganda with pro-Russian propaganda helps. In each piece of “manufactured or exaggerated news” there might be a bit of truth.

Western and Russian media restarted their 1914-like propaganda wars. Instead of calling for the immediate declaration of war like Austrian papers did in 1914 after the assassination of the crown prince, today they call for harder sanctions against Russia. In times of internet and Twitter, this 1914-style propaganda is quite difficult, but both Westerns and Russians manage to remain biased. Western propaganda papers directly opened with such covers.

The American propaganda channel Mashable was quick to publish a telephone conversation that attributed the shooting down of the plane to rebel leaders.

The beginning of the audio, Ukraine’s security services say, is between Igor Bezler, a pro-Russian rebel leader, and Vasili Geranin, a man Ukraine alleges to be a Russian intelligence agent. In the first line, Bezler allegedly says “We have just shot down a plane.” (This line can also be translated to “We have seen a plane shot down,” but then both translations says “cossacks” —Russian volunteers—from Chernukhino road block shot it down.)

The Russian propaganda channel RT.com published a similar piece of “prove” visible here.

This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew on board.The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately confiscated after it became clear a passenger jet was shot down.

In the meantime the Twitter account @spainbuca of this air controller has been deleted. The question remains if he was a Russian troll. The evidence is strong.

Still we should know that politicians are by definition of their profession liars. If Putin lies a bit more than otherliarspoliticians like Obama or Juncker, this means he is a better politician, visible in recent popularity rating in Russia.

Coming back to MH17, the following evidence, however is also striking.

Ukraine Air Traffic Control routed MH17 through War Zone – not normal route

MH17 7/17/14 route in Red, through War Zone. Different from previous routes

The Ukraine Air Traffic Control was in complete charge of Malaysia flight MH17.They had them fly a route directly through the war zone and out of the way than their normal flight and they had them fly lower than they requested.

Verify the route history on flightware.com yourself!This piece of information certainly fits into the Spanish air controller story from rt.com.

Why did Ukraine’s Security Service start working with the recordings of communications between Ukrainian air traffic controllers and the Boeing crew and with the data storage systems from Ukrainian radars without waiting for international investigators?

Shortly before the first reports of the shot-down the National Security of Ukraine had then issued a statement that there was evidence that the separatists possessed Russian weapons systems with which aircraft could be shot down from a great height.

Hence Ukrainians learned before that the separatists have the BUKs, just send them an airplane …

Assuming that the rebels possession of BUK-systems was known to Ukrainian authorities, the Ukrainian culpability can be easily assessed as an airspace control issue, asking: ”Did the State take prompt and responsible action to control and regulate the use of its airspace in order to remove the danger to civilian air traffic — knowing in advance either that the rebels were in possession of SAMs with ranges in excess of 5 km, as demonstrated by the downing of a AN-26 cargo plane on Wednesday, or knowing that the SAMs had been captured from the Ukrainian armed forces in the end of June?

In the past pro-Russian separatist have very clearly demonstrated their possession and use of Strela 2 (9K32) and Igla (9K38) MANPADS, but the vertical reach of these small missiles is nowhere even close to the cruising altitudes used by long haul passenger aircrafts like Boeing 777, and the flight level used by the flight MH17 before the accident is known (fl 330 – 33 000 ft). On the other hand, launch and overflight of a larger missile from a long range SAM-systems like S-300/400 from Russia would have been observable from both ground and space.

So what did happen?

It is possible that the MH17, approaching high from west, was misidentified as Ukraine’s military transport aircraft. Even more likely so, if the pro-Russian troops were operating under the impression that the airspace over eastern Ukraine had been declared as a no-fly zone for the international overflight traffic (it had not). It is also possible, even probable, that missile was launched quickly, using just a single Buk-M1 launcher and radar vehicle (TELAR) in autonomous mode, without the assistance of command and 3-D target acquisition radar vehicles of a complete Buk-M1 –system.

If and when the launcher was operating without no assistance from a normal SAM-battery or –battalion level functions, the type and even the exact flight level of the target may have been missed or ignored – even more so, if a rogue TELAR vehicle was manned by a single trained Buk-operator. And yes, contrary to what has been now claimed, a single TELAR vehicle in autonomous mode can be operated, if necessary, by a one well-trained operator, assisted by few quickly trained ersatz-operators. And there isn’t exactly a shortage of trained Buk-operators, whether reservists, active or ex-soldiers, in Ukraine or Russia – or many third party countries, including Finland.

And after the semi-active homing 9M38 missile has been successfully launched to the proper interception vector, it has a very near 100 % hit (and kill) probability against a civilian passenger aircraft, following a straight path in static cruising speed and altitude – unless somebody shuts down or blocks the fire control radar from the TELAR vehicle.

Responsibility, Retribution & Restoration

It is also very difficult to see any motivation for a planned destruction of a civilian aircraft with nearly 300 foreign passengers on board – for any of the parties involved in this conflict. So this tragedy was most likely a result of grave error(s) – meaning accident.

For all crimes like this one, however, one should ask: Where is the motive?

Cui bono? Who benefits? Who stood to gain? That is the first question everyone should ask with any potential crime (although of course it’s not the only one). Yet, that is the question that is being generally ignored regarding the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Instead, the western media leaps to “whodunnit?” only to immediately answer their own question with, “Well obviously either Russia, the separatists, or both.”

The reason for this is obvious. If they were to even consider the “qui bono?” question, they would have to admit that there is virtually no way that either Russia or the Donetsk separatists could possibly have expected to benefit from downing an airline full of internationals. There was no strategic value in it, and they couldn’t have expected it to be blamed in western media on anyone else or to do anything other than galvanize world opinion against them. Therefore, if either did do it (which is highly unlikely, given that the Russians were not directly fighting in the area, and the separatists were most likely not prepared to reach a flight at that altitude, given the limitations of their equipment and experience), it was almost surely by mistake.

Conclusion:

I have a strong suspicion that Ukrainian air control deliberately facilitated and enabled the shot-down. Combining Western and Ukrainian propaganda with pro-Russian propaganda helps. In each piece of “manufactured or exaggerated news” there might be a bit of truth. Still there is only one party to this conflict that has to gain from a deliberate blowing up of MH17, this is not Russia or the so-called “Donezk People’s Republic”. The Ukrainians, however, might have a motive: namely to delay a potential Russian intervention against the Ukrainian shelling of the Russian-speaking population in Donetsk and Lugansk by some time so that the Ukrainians can quickly win this war.